CHAPTER 1- INTRODUCTION TO GRINDING

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
D Introduction to Grinding, advantages and applications
D Grinding wheel and work piece interaction
D Interaction of the grit with the workpiece
D Stages of grinding
D Determination of grit spacing and grit protrusion
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------CUTTING ACTION IN GRINDING WHEEL.
Since the last two decades, there has been an increased interest in the investigation of
grinding processes. Grinding is the most common form of abrasive machining. It is a
material cutting process which engages an abrasive tool whose cutting elements are
grains of abrasive material known as grit. These grits are characterized by sharp cutting
points, high hot hardness, and chemical stability and wear resistance. The grits are
held together by a suitable bonding material to give shape of an abrasive tool.

A Grinding wheel essentially consists of a large number of abrasive particles, called

grains, held together b a suitable agent called the bond. It may be regarded as a
multipoint cutting tool with a cutting action similar to that of a milling cutter except that
the cutting points are irregularly shaped and randomly distributed over the active face of
the wheel. Those grains at the surface of the wheel that actually perform the cutting
operation are called active grains. In peripheral grinding , each active grain remove a
short chip of gradually increasing thickness in a way that is similar to the action of a
tooth on a slab milling cutter. Because of irregular shape of the grains, however, there is
considerable interface or plowing action, between each active grains and the new
work surface. This plowing action results in progressive wear, causing the formation of
worn areas on the active grains. As grinding proceeds, the number and size of these
worn areas increases, thus increasing the interference or friction, resulting in increase in
the force acting on the grain. Eventually this force becomes large enough either to tear
worn grains from the bond of the wheel and thus expose a new unworn grain or to
fracture the worn grain to produce new cutting edges. Thus a grinding wheel has a self
sharpening characteristic, and the force a grain can withstand before being torn from
the wheel or fractured is a most important factor when grinding wheel performance is
considered.

A wheel consists of relatively tough grains strongly bonded together will only exhibit the
self sharpening characteristics to a small degree and will quickly develop a glazed
Compiled by: Jagadeesha T, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, NITC, Calicut

appearance during grinding. This glazed appearance is caused by the relatively large
worn areas that develop on the active grains. These worn areas result in excessive
friction and the consequent overheating of the workpiece. Grinding under this condition
is inefficient and will necessitate dressing of wheel at frequent intervals to remove the
worn grains from wheel surface. Dressing is usually carried out by passing a diamond
tipped dressing tool across the wheel surface while the wheel rotates. Dressing with a
diamond tipped tool removes or fractures the worn grains at the wheel periphery, thus
generating a new and sharpened cutting surface. The need for frequent dressing to
remove worn grains characterizes a hard wheel.

Figure 1: Cutting action of abrasive grains.

Advantages of grinding
Grinding gives good dimensional accuracy
It gives good surface finish
It gives good form and locational accuracy
Grinding is applicable to both hardened and unhardened material
Applications
surface finishing
slitting and parting
descaling and deburring
stock removal ( abrasive milling) finishing of flat as well as cylindrical surface
Grinding of tools and cutters and resharpening of the same.

Generally, grinding is used as finishing process to get the desired surface finish, correct
size and accurate shape of the product. However recent researchers have shown that

Compiled by: Jagadeesha T, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, NITC, Calicut

grinding can also be used economically for bulk removal of unwanted material just like
turning , milling, etc. Two variants of process have come out clearly for bulk removal
Very high speed grinding
Creep feed grinding
Advent of advanced grinding machines and grinding wheels has elevated the status of
grinding to abrasive machining where high accuracy and surface finish as well as high
material removal rate can be achieved even on an unhardened material.
The bulk grinding wheel workpiece interaction as given in Figure 2 can be divided into
the following
Grit workpiece (forming chip)
Chip bond
Chip workpiece
Bond workpiece
Grit workpiece interaction - produce chip and desirable, the remaining three
increases the total grinding force and power requirement and therefore undesirable

Figure 2: Grinding wheel and workpiece interaction

Interaction of the grit with the workpiece
The importance of the grit shape can be easily realized because it determines the grit
geometry.For example rake and clearance angle as given in Figure . It appears that the
grits do not have definite geometry unlike a cutting tool & the grit rake angle may vary
from +45o to -60 o or more.

Compiled by: Jagadeesha T, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, NITC, Calicut

Figure 3: Variation in rake angle with grits of different shape

Grit with favourable geometry can produce chip in shear mode. However, grits having
large negative rake angle or rounded cutting edge do not form chips but may ruing
leading to lateral flow of the workpiece material as illustrated in Figure 4.

Figure 4: Grits engage shearing , ploughing and rubbing

Effect of grinding velocity and rake angle of grit on grinding force.

Figure 5 shows the role of rake angle on cutting force. A negative rake angle always
leads to higher cutting force than what is produced with a cutting point having positive
rake angle. The figure further illustrates that at low grinding velocity this difference in
grinding force is more pronounced. It is interesting to note that the difference is
narrowed at a high grinding velocity and the grinding force became virtually independent
of the rake angle. This is one of the reasons of conducting grinding at a very high
velocity in order to minimize the influence of negative rake angle.

Compiled by: Jagadeesha T, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, NITC, Calicut

Figure 5: Variation of grinding force with grinding velocity and rake angle of grit.

Various stages of grinding with grit depth of cut

Grinding is a combination of rubbing, ploughing and cutting (actual chip
formation with contribution of each being highly governed by grit geometry, work
material characteristics, grinding loop stiffness and the grinding velocity
The various stages of grinding and grinding force with grit depth of cut is shown in
Figure 6. At a small grit penetration only sliding of the grit occurs against the workpiece.
In this zone rise of force with increase of grit penetration is quite high. With further
increase of grit penetration, grit starts ploughing causing plastic flow of the material also
associated with high grinding force.

Figure 6: Various stages of Grinding and grinding force.

Compiled by: Jagadeesha T, Assistant Professor, Mechanical Engineering Department, NITC, Calicut